On The Ethics of Time Travel
by Daricio
Summary: In which Frisk and Sans have a frank discussion of the morality of resetting. No longer just a short one-shot: the time has come to test the machine. What will they use it for? Rescuing Gaster, of course!
1. On the Ethics of Resetting

Hello! This is just a quick one-shot, but it turned out well enough that I decided to go ahead and post it here as its own story. Just as a heads-up, this story features a pacifist!Frisk (As in, they've never done the genocide route at all) who uses they/them pronouns. I started writing it with female Frisk, but it just didn't sound right, so I changed it and went with they.

Enjoy!

-Daricio

* * *

Frisk could barely restrain themselves from skipping as they led Sans down the hallway of Alphys' lab, their hands planted firmly across his eye sockets to block his vision. The skeleton seemed amused by their antics, hands stuffed casually in his pockets as he walked forward, letting them steer him wherever they pleased. He even let them make him walk into walls and doorframes a few times, though by the way his smile widened each time they did it, they could guess that he could sense their pranks coming.

Both of them were in high spirits, having just come from a small, close-friends-and-family-only party for Frisk's 19th birthday, and now was the perfect time for them to give Sans a gift, too, even though it was their birthday and not his. It was the perfect time anyway.

"Surprise!" Frisk pulled their hands away, finally letting him see the 'mysterious' project they had been working on with Alphys for forever now. It wasn't done yet, but it was getting close, and the human just couldn't keep it a secret anymore. Excited, they stepped to one side so they could watch his expression, see if he recognized it before they told him what it was.

When they saw his eyes, however, they stopped dead, their grin fading. Though his smile remained frozen almost unnaturally on his face, his features felt blank, his eyelights completely dark. An almost imperceptible sense of doom began to spread through the room, and he remained silent for far too long.

"kid..." he finally said tightly, not looking away from the complicated machinery in front of him. "what is this all about?"

Frisk took an automatic step away from him. "I... You don't like it? What's...?"

Eyes still ominously dark, Sans pulled his left hand out of his hoodie pocket and lifted it into the air. Magic surged around him as he summoned a giant skull cannon, already charging for a blast of energy, its wide maw pointed directly at the machine they were almost done fixing.

"Wait, stop! Sans, what are you doing?" Without thinking, Frisk ran at him, trying to tackle him to the ground, push him away, anything to snap him out of whatever had just come over him. To their surprise, he moved deftly out of the way, much faster than they'd ever seen him move before, and they wound up sprawled on the floor. "Stop!"

To his credit, he listened to them, slowly letting his hand drop, and his strange, scary attack faded away. He breathed heavily, his dark gaze now pointed at the floor as both hands clenched into fists. "why? why would you put this thing back together?"

Frisk stared at him from their place on the ground, propping themselves up on their elbows. "Sans... I found the blueprints in _your_ lab. You were trying to fix it before, right? I... I just wanted..."

Sans chuckled, but it came out hollow and cold. "...you haven't been able to SAVE or LOAD since we came to the surface, right? it only ever worked in the underground. now you want it back."

Baffled, Frisk let their face settle into a neutral expression, slowly rising to a sitting position. "Well... I mean, yeah. But... I thought you'd be happy about this. I thought you wanted-"

"don't you know why i built that machine in the first place?" Sans asked harshly. When they didn't answer right away, he took a breath and finally looked at them.

After a moment, the lights in his eyes flickered back into existence and he slumped against a nearby wall, looking pained. "guess you don't... okay, then... frisk, even before you showed up, there was something—an anomaly—messing with our timeline."

Frisk nodded. Flowey, of course, but they weren't going to say so. Instead they stayed silent, waiting for Sans to keep going.

It took him a while, but eventually, he sighed. "at first, we only knew about it from what we could see on our monitors, along with the déjà vu stuff. some of the stuff the anomaly did, or what little we could tell for sure it was doing, was enough to warrant trying to make it stop."

"Who's 'we'?" Frisk asked softly, tilting their head to one side. They had to be careful about how they asked this; Sans didn't like to talk about himself, and after that display, they didn't want him dodging questions. He'd hinted to them before that he knew something about the resets, but they had never really gotten a straight answer out of him. This was a first. "Someone was working with you? But Alphys said she'd never seen these blueprints before I showed them to her."

Sans smiled, giving them a sly wink. "yup. guess it wasn't her, then. anyway, to stop the anomaly, we figured we could try to hijack the resets ourselves. so we built this thing, trying to access that ability to SAVE." He jerked a thumb back at the machine without looking at it. "it worked... once."

And of course Sans was dodging their questions anyway. Frisk frowned at him. "Just once?"

"just once. but that was enough to screw everything up." Sans sighed, grin still planted on his face as his eyelights darkened again. "the point is, kid, we weren't trying to hijack the resets so that we could use the power. we wanted to _block_ the anomaly from using it. we were trying to _stop_ the resets. and when you came and freed monsterkind from the underground, you finally succeeded where we'd failed. the resets stopped."

Frisk went very still. "I... I'm sorry. I didn't realize. But Sans, I _need_ this ability."

"no. you really don't."

Vehemently, Frisk shook their head. "You don't understand. If I can't reset-"

Sans was suddenly standing right beside them, one hand gripping their shoulder like a vice. "if you can't reset, then you can't treat everyone like puppets. like _toys_."

Frisk gaped at him. They'd never seen Sans like this before. "I... I would never..."

"but you did. reset after reset, over and over. you can't just keep treating life like it's some... some game that you have to get the perfect ending for!" Sans' grip tightened. "that's not how life works! that's not how life is _supposed_ to work."

"If I hadn't been able to reset, Toriel would be _dead_ right now!" Frisk burst out, tears coming to their eyes.

That stopped Sans in his tracks for a moment. He stared blankly down at them, and they went on, unable to meet his gaze. "W-when she first found me, she tried to keep me from leaving the Ruins, but I was determined to get out of the Underground. She told me to prove myself, and she attacked me. I... I didn't know what to do, I was just a kid. I figured if I showed her I could fight, she'd let me pass. But..." Frisk bit their lip, their voice dropping to a whisper. "I didn't realize how easy it is for a human to kill a monster... I didn't mean to do it. I felt... like the scum of the earth."

Sans didn't respond. Frisk couldn't even begin to guess what was going through his mind. They couldn't stop thinking about the judgement Sans had passed on them near the end of their journey: "you never gained any EXP." Only technically true. Their sins crawled on their back.

"I was... pretty horrified, but I pressed on. I met you and Papyrus, but somewhere along the line, a Chilldrake caught me off guard, and I died." The fact that they'd died multiple times before was something that would always be weird to tell people. "And a moment later, I found myself back at my save point, before I fought Toriel. This time, I got past her without hurting her. So, you see? We wouldn't be here like this if I couldn't reset."

With a heavy sigh, Sans finally released their shoulder, turning away. "... you're right, we wouldn't. but you're still wrong."

Frisk could only stare at him. "So... I should have just left it the way it went the first time?" they asked incredulously, a little hurt. "Toriel dead, and me dead?"

"look, i'm not saying that all this," he gestured vaguely around him, "isn't the best 'ending' to the underground arc of our lives. because it is. good job, kid. really."

"Then how about what I want the reset powers for now?" Frisk demanded. "Not sure if you've noticed, but being the Ambassador for Monsters isn't easy. Every day, I screw something up, and one of these times, someone's going to get hurt and I won't be able to fix it!"

Sans slumped a little, both hands sliding automatically into his pockets. "yeah. and _that's_ how life's supposed to work. actions should have consequences, and nobody should have the power to simply avoid them. to sweep them under the rug like they never happened. that kind of power... is the reason why i can't even count the number of times i've watched papyrus die right before my eyes."

Automatically, Frisk opened their mouth, but quickly found that there were no words to respond to that with. Their mouth closed again. Opened for another try. Closed. They knew Flowey had done some terrible things, but...

Sans let his words sink in for a minute, then turned to glance at Frisk's expression. "heh. yeah, i know that _you_ never hurt my brother. but you could have. you could have done anything and gotten away with it. you can't tell me you've never wondered what would happen if you, say, punched jerry in the face, then reloaded so he wouldn't remember. or tried ignoring greater dog when it really wanted you to play with it, just so you could watch it get desperate. hell, i already know you experimented with the different options of that 'date' with alphys, among other things, didn't you? doesn't hurt them any, right?"

He paused to catch his breath, eyes falling shut, before continuing, "you see, kiddo... if there are no consequences... nothing matters anymore. nobody matters anymore."

"I... That's not true," Frisk managed to croak out, throat dry. "I care about my friends."

With a sigh, Sans finally faced them again, his eyes brightening a little as his usual, relaxed smile returned to his face. "i know you do," he admitted. "you're a good kid. but frisk, you have to understand something: everyone makes mistakes. and that's okay. mistakes are the only way we learn things."

Frisk slowly shook their head. "I don't want anyone else to suffer because of my mistakes."

Carefully, Sans seated himself on the floor beside them, looking up at the machine with a far-off expression. "sometimes you can't help that. but knowing that your mistakes could hurt others, and that you can't take anything back... well, isn't that just motivation to improve yourself? to be a better person? if your mistakes never affect anyone else, what reason do you have to try to be good all the time?"

It took Frisk a long time to come up with a response to that, and the room fell silent as they both stared wordlessly at the machine.

Finally, Frisk ventured, "Even if nobody else remembers... _I_ remember. That's reason enough for me to be as good as I can."

Sans glanced up with a smirk, then shook his head, chuckling to himself. Then, he reached over and clapped them on the back. "heh. i guess we can all count ourselves lucky that you think so."

Pulling himself to his feet, the skeleton cast one last look at Frisk's project before walking slowly to the door. "welp. in the end, i can't actually make you do anything, especially not once you've got your mind set. i've given my two cents, and as long as you consider what i said, i'm not going to keep you from finishing this thing if that's what you really want."

His unspoken implication that he'd rather see the machine destroyed hung in the air between them, and Frisk let out a sigh. They'd always liked Sans, and seeing such obvious disapproval from him hurt. But they couldn't just give up on this, and both of them knew it.

"don't worry, kid," Sans said with a wink. "if you were to ever take things too far the wrong direction, i'd stop you. promise. just don't make me regret that."

Before Frisk could say anything more, he stepped out of the room and was gone.


	2. A Test Run

"DEAR BROTHER,

I AM NOT HOME RIGHT NOW. BUT FEAR NOT! I HAVE MERELY GONE TO DO SCIENCING WITH ALPHYS AND FRISK. I WILL BE BACK SOMETIME AROUND, WELL… MAYBE YESTERDAY? THERE'S TIME TRAVEL INVOLVED. ANYWAY, I MADE YOU SOME SPAGHETTI IN CASE IT TAKES A WHILE. IT IS IN THE FRIDGE FOR YOU. TAKE CARE! AND PICK UP YOUR SOCK!

LOVE, PAPYRUS."

For several minutes after reading the note that had been left on their front door, Sans could only glare at the page, barely seeing what he was looking at as he seethed. He'd known that his brother was spending an unusual amount of time lately hanging out with the kid, but he hadn't realized Frisk would stoop to going behind his back to talk Papyrus into helping them with their foolhardy attempts to get the machine working again. Didn't they realize how dangerous that thing was?

Finally, Sans released his death grip on the note, letting it fall to the grass beside their front porch as he shifted his gaze up to the bright blue sky. The kid knew he didn't approve of their experiments, and now they were getting Papyrus of all people involved in it.

Sans took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. His brother was an adult, so it wasn't like he couldn't make his own decisions on whether or not to help out, but it was also super easy to talk Papyrus into doing just about anything for anyone. Frisk should have at least talked to him about this.

Well, he didn't have to just stand there and take it.

Decisively, he made a sharp turn into a shortcut to Alphys's surface lab, walking straight to the room he knew housed the machine. The three people inside startled at his sudden appearance, two of them looking guilty enough that he could tell right away that they knew exactly why he was there.

"Hey Alphys, Frisk," he said casually, nodding at each of them with a grin. His hands slid automatically into the pockets of his Black Mesa hoodie as he leaned against the doorframe. "Hi, Paps. Sup?"

Alphys gave him her own shaky grin in return. "O-oh, hi Sans. Fancy m-meeting you here…" Frisk scuffed a shoe on the ground, not making eye contact.

Papyrus jumped up from where he'd been kneeling next to the machine checking on the electronics, dropping his soldering iron on the floor as he happily bounced over to meet his brother. "Sans! So you decided to come check it out for yourself! Doesn't it look amazing?"

"Sure, bro. It looks great." Sans gave the machine a sidelong glance, noting that it did, in fact, look much better than it had since Frisk had first showed it to him. He returned his attention to the kid and the very nervous scientist, keeping his tone level. "So, how long has Papyrus been helping you with this?"

"Approximately four months!" Papyrus announced proudly. "At first, Frisk and Alphys just asked me to help them move some of the heavy equipment around, but when the two of them told me why they were doing this, I just had to help as much as I could! That's why I'll be the one test-driving this today!"

Frisk rushed to explain, the words spilling out of their mouth. "I wasn't trying to put Papyrus in any danger, I swear. Originally we were going to test it on me, but Alphys says I probably can't travel back far enough, since we're trying to get to a point before I was born, and she can't test it on herself because she has to stay here to run all the machinery, and we knew you wouldn't want to help, and-"

Sans' eyebrow ridges furrowed in genuine confusion and he held up a hand to stop them. "Wait, wait, hold up. I thought you were just trying to get resets back. What are you talking about now?"

Alphys timidly spoke up. "I-it's just that, well… A-apparently while Frisk was traveling through the Underground, they heard a few people, these grey, glitched out monsters, make reference to a Royal Scientist before me. But, I n-never heard of anything like that. I was the f-first Royal Scientist that I ever knew of. B-but these people say otherwise, and, uh, once Frisk mentioned it, I realized that, that I have a lot of blueprints and stuff that I have n-no idea where they came from. So i-it must be him!"

Frisk nodded, their face solemn. "They say he designed and built the Core, amongst other achievements. But an experiment went wrong and he fell into his own creation. He was scattered across time and space, and now nobody remembers him. His name was Doctor **##{** ﷺ **Ɽⱸꝱⱥ** ﺡ **Ꚍꜿꝺ** ﷺ **}##**."

Blinking hard, Sans shook his head to clear it from the strange buzzing that had just washed over him. "It was _what_?"

"S-so you can't hear it either?" Alphys said softly. "These people told Frisk what the scientist's name was, but anytime they try to tell anyone else about him, c-certain details fuzz out. We, uh, think it has something to do with the s-scattered across time and space bit."

Papyrus gave his brother a grin. "Since we're working on a time machine anyway, we figured we could launch a rescue mission! After all, someone who did something as cool as building the Core deserves to be remembered, right?"

By now, Sans' usual smile had tightened into more of a grimace. Slowly, he looked to Frisk. "You know I don't like time travel. We talked about this. Going back to fix mistakes isn't how life is supposed to work. Besides, you don't even know if this _will_ work."

Frisk shook their head. "Didn't you once tell me that if someone were to have some kind of special power, that they should try to use it to do the right thing?"

Sans faltered a moment. Had he said that? His eyes narrowed a fraction as mild deja vu hit him. Maybe he had, but not in this timeline. He decided to let it slide, turning to Papyrus instead. With a deep breath, he tried for simple, blunt honesty. "Papyrus, I really don't want you risking yourself for this. It's dangerous."

"Nyeh heh heh. Worry not, Sans!" His brother struck a dramatic pose, the scarf of his battle body fluttering in a non-existent wind. "We are only doing a test run today, and Doctor Alphys has put precautions in place, so there shouldn't be any problems!"

Alphys nodded, hands fiddling with a small wrench. "Y-yeah, it's powered with DT, but it's all contained, so..."

Despite how awesome his brother was, Sans still wasn't convinced. "I'm not worried about the machine itself. Time travel is just not a good idea. No matter how 'cool' this scientist guy was, it's not worth-"

Papyrus laid a gloved hand on Sans' shoulder, giving him a thumbs-up with the other. "If you're so worried, why don't you test it with me, brother?"

"No." Sans didn't even have to think about that one. His hands went deeper into his hoodie pockets as he slumped against the doorframe, glancing away. "C'mon, Paps. You should know better than anyone _why_ I don't like this," he muttered.

For a moment, Papyrus didn't respond, but then he squeezed Sans' shoulder briefly before releasing it. "I do, Sans. But you also should know better than anyone why I have to help if I can."

Sans gave his brother a hesitant but warm smile. "Yeah. I know. That's just how you are."

"I-in all honesty, Sans…" Alphys said uneasily. "The machine is safe, I-I'm certain of that, but I… would really feel a lot better if someone with y-your technical background went with-"

A loud clanking sound suddenly rang through the room, and all four jumped slightly, heads whipping around to look at the machine. Nobody was anywhere near it, but bits of metal flew here and there haphazardly, side panels flying open and sparks flying as wires disconnected and reconnected seemingly by themselves.

Without thinking, Sans grabbed Papyrus, tugging him further away from the machine as he let his magic light up his eye. He reached out with blue magic, hoping to catch whatever was over there by surprise, but the only souls in the room belonged to Alphys, Frisk, Papyrus, and himself.

"... the heck?" Frisk murmured. "What's going… Oh!"

A dark form took shape as the movement by the machine came to a stop, and a strange, static-filled voice whispered across the space between them. "You are all wasting too much time bickering."

Sans barely had time to register in surprise that the words had been spoken in Hands, before the form slammed one still-hazy appendage against the side of the machine. "Area of effect increased by 500%. This should do it," the voice continued. "Have a Fun trip."

The room exploded.

* * *

Even before she was fully conscious, Alphys was murmuring frantically to herself, "Oh no, oh no. Oh no…"

With a jolt, she startled awake, quickly sitting up and looking around in fear, wringing her hands together. Where…?

Alphys let out a slow breath as she recognized her location. "I… I'm in the true lab," she noted with a frown. "Back in the Underground." The main lights were off, but she'd woken up right next to the elevator leading back up into the lab proper. She'd passed through this long hallway every day for months, so even in darkness, she couldn't mistake it.

"B-but how? That weird thing…" Her eyes widened as she realized. "O-oh! Of course! We had the physical coordinates set for the true lab so we could search for the scientist! So when that thing messed with-"

With a sharp gasp, she interrupted herself again. "Wait, was that thing the old scientist? O-or, what's left of him? What did he do to the machine?"

It had said something just before everything went black, she knew, but it wasn't in a language she was familiar with. Or rather, it _sounded_ familiar, but she couldn't tell for sure why.

One thing was sure, though; she had just been caught up in the blast of an exploding time machine. She _had_ to get access to a computer system, stat; if only to check the date. Alphys scrambled into the elevator and hit the button to go up. The upstairs computer had always been easier for her to work with than the older equipment in the true lab, and right now she needed speed.

Alphys shuffled from one foot to the other as the elevator rose. It's surprisingly hard to feel like you're rushing when you're stuck standing in a small room, even if it was technically travelling faster than she could actually move on her own. The doors dinged open before she could contemplate that further, and she hurried out into the main floor.

It looked nothing like she remembered.

"Oh, god…" she whispered. "Oh god, oh god, oh my god…"

Before they'd left the Underground and moved to the Surface, Alphys had cleared out basically everything upstairs. Yet this lab, now, was far more cluttered than she ever remembered it being, each wall lined with tables full of equipment, tools, blueprints, and small, partially-completed machines. Her usual desk was nowhere in sight, with no trace of the giant monitor that had been beside it.

Most importantly, though, and most disconcertingly, the room currently had a single occupant besides herself.

The other monster turned at the noise Alphys was making and abruptly dropped the entire stack of paper she'd been holding. "AAAAAAH!" The monster reached out desperately for a nearby table to steady herself, her free hand clutching at her glasses to keep them on her face. "W-what? H-how?"

Correction: the room did have two occupants… but neither of them weren't herself.

"Oh my god, I really did travel back in time!"

* * *

When Frisk opened their eyes, they half expected to be lying on a patch of golden flowers, staring up at a hole in the ceiling thousands of meters above them. Instead, they seemed to be in a nearly pitch black room, lying on something decidedly much harder than flowers and dirt, and their whole body ached.

Slowly, they maneuvered themselves into an upright position, rubbing the side of their head to dull the pain.

The room they'd ended up in had an eerily familiar feeling to it, and as they managed to make out a long row of refrigerators in the darkness, they realized they were in the true lab, in the room where they'd first met Snowy's mother. They sat against the wall at the end of the room, where the line of fridges ended at the door to the room that held the power override key slot.

Something doesn't feel right here.

They weren't really sure, but there might have been more refrigerators in here the last time they'd seen it? Or maybe that was Snowy's mother pretending to be an inanimate object. It really was hard to tell with all the lights shut off, even if the entire place did seem to have a faint glow that kept it from becoming pitch black.

Frisk got to their feet, wandering to the nearest fridge and pulling it open in curiosity, wincing slightly at the comparatively bright light that blinked on inside. Strangely, unlike the near emptiness they'd encountered here last time, this refrigerator held a large assortment of beakers and vials filled with liquids of all colors, each labeled neatly in symbols that they didn't recognize.

Something definitely doesn't feel right here.

Closing the fridge again, Frisk frowned at the dim room. It was pretty obvious that they'd gone back in time. The question was, how far?

That black figure that had messed with the machine was Doctor Gaster, they were almost completely sure of that. And if that was the case, he'd probably messed with it in such a way to send them back to the right time to save him.

Well. This rescue mission had started much sooner than any of them had anticipated. But at least Alphys' theory that Frisk couldn't go back this far had been disproved. Triumph.

But why had he interfered? They were going to go back and help even if he hadn't done anything. Or at least Papyrus was, but Frisk probably would have insisted on going with the energetic skeleton, regardless of Alphys' warnings, so it wasn't like Gaster had really changed anything by acting that way. Maybe the old royal scientist was just impatient. Or crazy.

At any rate, they weren't going to get any answers by simply standing around. They had to locate Gaster and try to figure out what had happened-what _would_ happen-to erase him from time.

Knowing that they were one step closer to helping the past royal scientist filled them with Determination.

* * *

The first thing Sans became aware of was a gloved hand shoved halfway into his eye socket, which was quite uncomfortable. He tried to raise a hand to remedy this situation, and that's when he became aware of another thing: something lay on top of him, and he couldn't move.

He shifted awkwardly, tilting his head as far back as he could in an attempt to see anything, blinking quickly to clear his vision. The right eye wouldn't respond, mostly due to the glove literally inside his face, but through the left, he made out the shape of his brother in the darkness of the room, sprawled across him as though they'd both been thrown there. Papyrus was still unconscious, his head hanging limply off of Sans's chest.

Sans felt his soul leap fearfully in his chest. "Brother?" he whispered, finally managing to free one of his arms and hurriedly using it to grab his brother's shoulder. "Papyrus, are you alright?"

A soft groan answered him, and Papyrus lifted his head blearily. "What happened? You…"

Just then, the taller skeleton seemed to realize that Sans was lying underneath him and abruptly flailed, trying to roll off. "Oh my god, Sans! Why didn't you tell me I landed on you?! I didn't hurt you, did I?"

Sans's relieved laugh turned into a grunt as Papyrus accidentally buried an elbow in his ribcage in his haste to scramble to his feet. "Oof… uhh, nah, bro, I'm okay. I think you took the brunt of the explosion. Thanks."

As soon as the taller skeleton got completely to his feet, he began scanning their extremely dark surroundings. "It wasn't an explosion," he observed, appearing troubled by this. "Whoever activated the machine just now meant to include all of us in the effect. He said so."

Sans nodded, accepting Papyrus's outstretched hand as he got up as well. "So you understood that, huh?"

"Of course I did. He was speaking in our secret language. I thought we were the only ones who knew that language?"

"I thought so, too." Sans was not comforted at all by the idea of someone else speaking it. "We're in the true lab, aren't we?"

Papyrus frowned, placing his hands on his hips in a way that, to most people, would have made him look confident, but that told Sans just how tense his brother was. "That is where we set the coordinates for the machine," he admitted. "But I don't really know. I haven't been down here before."

"It's been a while… but I think that's the emergency elevator that goes up to the Capital." Sans pointed out the blinking lights on the doorway in front of them, each a different color. Their glow lit the room only enough for the two brothers to make each other out in the darkness, but also revealed…

Sans grinned, hands sliding lazily into his pockets as he padded over that direction. "Which is super lucky, 'cause that's also where the vending machine is. Score."

"Sans! We absolutely did not just go through wacky space-time shenanigans just so you could eat possibly-decades-old chisps!" Papyrus scolded, stamping a foot on the ground. "We need to find Dr. Alphys and the human, and get-"

He cut off sharply, and Sans came to a dead halt, as the room's main lights abruptly flashed on, blinding both of them for a moment.

"Ow." Sans peeked out from behind his arms, which he'd instinctively thrown up to shield his eyes, to find that what he'd thought was the familiar vending machine was instead a decidedly unfamiliar, large filing cabinet, one drawer open to show off countless tightly packed sheets of paper.

Before he could verbalize his disappointment at that realization, the doors of the elevator whirred open with a faint chime and a tall man stepped out. A tall _skeleton_ man, who regarded the two brothers with a defensive, surprised expression, gripping a clipboard in one hand and adjusting a thin pair of glasses on his face with the other.

"Oh! Hello!" Papyrus exclaimed cheerfully. "Sorry for intruding like this! A strange, ghost-like person sabotaged our time machine, and we ended up here! Could you tell us where to find the Royal Scientist?"

The man stared speechlessly at him for several long moments before turning a distrustful gaze on Sans. "A… time machine? But you are..." Spectral hands materialized in the air beside him, signing out the words he spoke aloud. In Hands.

Sans leaned back on his heels, trying to keep an air of lazy indifference about him, but everything about this guy set off alarm bells in his head, not least of which was his use of their 'secret' language. If he'd been a monster with hair, it would be standing on end.

Papyrus seemed just as surprised by that as his brother, though not nearly as freaked out. "You speak in Hands, too!" He whirled to give Sans a confused frown. "That's four of us, now!"

Four… unless two of them were actually the same person. Sans narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

The baffled royal scientist (because who else could it be at this point?) took a rather long time to compose himself before taking a deep breath and saying simply, "... What."


End file.
